12/29/2023 0 Comments Lone hill onyx caveOther business battles were fought in court. The violence, according to the Register, was “said to have been an outgrowth of rivalry between employees” at the two tourist attractions. As the Richmond Daily Register reported in 1921, an argument broke out after Len Ferguson, Mammoth Cave’s 30-year-old postmaster, informed Clell Lee, a 26-year-old associated with the Great Onyx Cave, that “there was no mail for him.” (Another account reported that both men were “engaged in the taxicab business.”) Ferguson shot Lee twice in the back, killing him instantly. Tensions between cave operators could turn deadly. Another tactic was telling tourists that all the caves were connected, so no matter which one they entered through, the experience would be identical. Some cappers threw rocks when tourists approached a rival caver, or they masqueraded as fellow tourists who had just learned that Mammoth Cave was too filled with kerosene smoke to enjoy. Summarizing the cutthroat environment for the Chicago Tribune in 1925, reporter Tom Killian wrote, “Every boy growing up knows that it’s either a case of going out among the ‘ furriners,’ getting a job as a cave guide or, best of all, discovering a cave for himself.” Ultimately, the goal was to “settle down and ‘hustle’ tourists, a local expression.”Ĭopy of an 1894 photograph of a guide and a group of visitors to Mammoth Cave There was so much competition that if you weren’t willing to go above and beyond, you really wouldn’t stand a chance successful.” There was a whole lot more money to be made in the tourism industry than there was … in pretty much any other part of life. The wealthy people who were traveling to see Mammoth Cave provided an opportunity that otherwise would not have. “By the time the early 20th century came along, they most of the resources and caves in the area. “The people were pretty poor farmers,” says David Randolph Kem, author of The Kentucky Cave Wars: The Century That Shaped Mammoth Cave National Park. As Mammoth Cave’s popularity skyrocketed in the late 19th century, developers took steps to capitalize on the tourist boom, opening rival caves and redirecting motorists to their own attractions. The first formal tour of the cave took place in 1816 over the next five decades, luminaries ranging from Ralph Waldo Emerson to opera singer Jenny Lind to naturalist John Muir visited the site. But it wasn’t until the 1790s that the cave system caught the attention of white settlers. Native Americans discovered Mammoth Cave as early as 5000 B.C.E. Solicitors for the Great Onyx Operating Committee at work, circa 1940 It drove “the people of cave country to actively explore the region for nearly a century,” the NPS notes, laying the groundwork for what is now the world’s longest known cave system: Mammoth Cave National Park. Still, the drama had at least one positive outcome. By the time the Kentucky Cave Wars ended in the 1960s, the “competition and conflict” had damaged “lives, resources and reputations,” according to the National Park Service (NPS). Behind the billboards, promises of onyx troves and cavalier marketing tactics lay a complex web of lawsuits, violence and tragedy. Some of these “ cappers,” as the visor-wearing roadside advertisers were called, tossed reading material into cars or climbed onto the vehicles’ running boards-narrow platforms attached to car doors-to guide drivers away from Mammoth Cave.įew travelers realized just how much was at stake as cappers vied for their attention. ![]() They might be besieged by leaflet-bearing locals encouraging them to visit competitors. Once nearby, tourists would spot billboards for rival caves and hear hucksters’ accompanying pitches. ![]() In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, visitors to south-central Kentucky’s cave region were likely bound for Mammoth Cave, a seemingly never-ending network of passageways offering cool air and magnificent underground spaces.
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